Merry Christmas!

Now that all classes have finished for 2015, I want to thank you all for a successful year of Zanshin. Last year I was amazed at the support and encouragement from all of you. This year we have settled in to a zantastic club with excellent instructors and great quality training, and it’s really hard to believe it’s only been 16 months. A lot of students have said to me that it feels like we’ve always been Zanshin, and I absolutely agree. It’s shaping up to be even more than I could have imagined it to become.

We’ve just had our biggest grading ever, since I started in Canberra in 1999. Record numbers of students training and grading shows us that our students and instructors are motivated and achieving their goals. The challenge of learning new katas and techniques is giving us all something to work towards. We now have all 10 senior katas! It’s great that now each grade has their own, progressively more challenging, kata to learn and practice. Constant challenge and improvement drives us to succeed, and we’ve demonstrated that over and over with the improvement of our students.

We have welcomed new instructors and black belts into our ranks. It takes a long time and a lot of dedication to train up to the highest ranks, and it’s always a challenge for any martial art to build and maintain a large group of high ranked students without sacraficing quality. That we continue to grow our top end shows what a strong club we have.

I look forward to training with you all in the new year, and I expect big things to come. We’ve already set the bar high and we will aim to push it even higher.